


The Footprints, The Creaking, and The Items Missing

by anfarlamb



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Dave | Technoblade and Wilbur Soot and TommyInnit are Siblings, Family Dynamics, Gen, Guilt, Mentioned Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Mentioned Wilbur Soot, Post-Manberg-Pogtopia War on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Sleepy Bois Inc as Family, TommyInnit Deserves Better (Video Blogging RPF), Wilbur is dead but I don't call him Ghostbur, i cant tag to save my life, techno's chat are the voices, tommy is also dead im sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:53:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28354989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anfarlamb/pseuds/anfarlamb
Summary: Technoblade should've noticed the signs. He lived alone in the middle of a wintry tundra, for God's sake. He should've seen that things had changed in the snow, that the house was mumbling to him in the nights, that his chests cradled newfound gaps with seemingly no reason at all.He did notice the signs. He saw them, and he didn't do anything about them.He'd pay for it.
Relationships: Dave | Technoblade & Phil Watson
Comments: 26
Kudos: 253
Collections: Completed stories I've read, MCYT Fic Rec, Other Fanfoms





	1. What He Should've Noticed

**Author's Note:**

> hello!  
> this is my first bit of writing on ao3 that i'm posting, and mainly this was just a light break from my other (also dream smp-centered) fanfic that I'm currently planning (stay tuned!). to be honest I barely know how to use this site, i just scrape by on my 1% of knowledge about it, so i hope everything with this turns out ok LOL 
> 
> ANYWAYS, this starts off with just Techno, Phil shows up later. this was originally meant to be a lot shorter and then it ended up much longer, oops  
> also, in the tags there is character death mentioned - there is no written description of this death, but it's basically what the story ends up centering around (esp second chapter), so i felt like it would be wrong not to tag it as such, so just be careful !!
> 
> enjoy! :]

He should’ve known something was wrong when there were footprints in the snow.

Footprints, specifically, because Technoblade knew Philza wore boots. Nobody else visited him, nobody else knew where he lived, and his father always wore boots; they came up to the middle of his shin, and the bottoms cradled a chevron-esque pattern. They weren’t half similar to the small feet he saw printed in the snow, nothing like the spatterings of cerise he thought he spied in the pristine expanse as he traveled back to his house following another trip to the Nether.

It faded away in his mind as he pulled his cape tighter around his shoulders, trying to shake off the absent feeling of heat clinging to his frame. The Nether had always been too hot for the man, who normally adorned heavy mantles and excessive cloth, so he was pleased to finally be in the arctic tundra again. Hopping easily up the steps to his front door and slipping in, he shut the entry behind him with a light _swoosh_ of air curling around him, a _welcome back_ reverberating comfortingly in his ears. 

He pulled his hair out of the loose braid he'd tried to put it in - Wilbur was the only one who’d ever been able to make it stay up. With his ghostly twin in an unknown location, his half-attempts at keeping his hair up would have to do. There was no other option. Not even Phil, who visited at least thrice weekly, could do it right. It was just different when Wilbur did it for him. 

The warrior moved around with expert precision; he took his blue-toned cloak off, hung it up on a nearby hook, lit the fireplace with adjacent matches, and seated himself on the couch resting in the center. He didn’t get up right away. Instead, he pried the boots off his feet and pulled both legs up underneath him.

The moment he moved, the voices returned. It was as though they knew when he wanted to relax for just a half-second, and their existence was solely to ruin that. Their brief “welcome back” meant nothing when they came back ten minutes later to torture him with phrases and words he didn’t understand, printed on the insides of his mind in tiny red print.

_Tommy, Tommy, Tommy,_ they murmured. Frustration bubbled faintly in his throat. He was alone in his house. Why were they chanting Tommy’s name? His younger brother wasn’t here. His younger brother had been exiled from L’manberg and was… well, he had no idea. But he did know that he wasn’t here; the house was cold up until he’d lit the fireplace to warm it.

_Tommy, Tommy, Tommy,_ they repeated, in evident refutation of his thoughts. His lip curled and he swatted absently at the air around him like it’d get rid of the tones that swirled inside his head. The last time he’d seen Tommy was when he’d told him that he should die like a hero. He was in exile now. Techno wrung his hands together to try to warm them up.

The voices didn’t leave. If anything, they grew a little louder, more frantic, sharper, like knives pressing into his brain. _Look, look,_ they said, and his eyes skittered around like he really expected something would be there. Nothing. Warm light glanced off objects and chests, the flames reflecting hotly in his sharpened gaze.

He huffed, got up, and turned to the brewing stand on the counter in the kitchen. 

There was a reason he worked so often.

\---

  
He should’ve known something was wrong when there was creaking in the house.

All houses creaked, all houses groaned, all houses muttered and whispered in response to natural movement within it. But Technoblade didn’t spend a _lot_ of time in his home. He spent most of it outside, gathering materials, tending to the bees or the turtles, chopping trees, visiting the Nether. Even making half-trips to half-familiar places for Phil.

It meant that the house, most times, was empty. Save for the early mornings, the late evenings, dark nights, and some afternoons, it was empty.

So when the floor kept on squeaking beneath his feet, he should’ve known.

He chalked it up to nobody but his father. He tended to leave his boots on when entering the house, and so it was likely that the wood was just buckling beneath his father’s soles. Techno made a mental note to tell the man to quit wearing his shoes inside.

On a snowy evening, he checked the area beneath his chest room.

It was technically a basement beneath a basement, as the chamber with his belongings was located below the main living space. The area wasn’t even half-done. The stone flooring stared up at him in the torchlight, and the walls, still dirt, smiled as he entered.

A soft _moo_ startled him from his thoughts and he turned to spy a steer, standing with its two big brown eyes boring into him. He approached and gently scritched the creature behind its ears, to which it leaned into his light touch.

He peered back around the basement, as though expecting someone to jump out and expose themselves for all the odd happenings lately. The noises, the footprints, anything.

_Tommy, Tommy._ Statements in his head re-appeared. He couldn’t go a moment without them bothering him, could he? _Aww. Cow. Tommy. Tommy._

Technoblade gave the cow some grass, leaving a small bucket of water on the floor and a bit of wheat for it, too. Yet that was all. The basement was empty, as he had expected. His feet pattered almost-soundlessly against the rocky flooring, and for a moment he thought he heard talking. Someone was there. Someone was in his house.

_Phil, Tommy, Phil, Dream, Techno, Tommy, Wil._ The tones instantly offered names, and he had to ignore them. Half of those people didn’t even know where he lived. 

“Phil?” Even as he spoke, he knew it wasn’t Phil, Phil wasn’t here. Someone _else_ was here. His eyes swept the room sharply, two twin red daggers that slashed anything it touched.

Nothing. There was no talking anymore, no noise. It was just him. He swallowed a sigh and turned back to the ladder, beginning to climb up a few of its rungs. If there was anyone here, then he must’ve had- 

_No, no, no,_ the tones hissed, and, startled, he nearly fell back onto the floor. _No._

So there was nobody here, then?

The question was left unanswered as he pulled himself up into the chest room.

\---

  
He should’ve known something was wrong when things went missing.

It was no surprise that his stores were very full. He kept many belongings and needed chests to store them all. Any normal individual would’ve thrown out a lot of the stuff that he just bundled up into his fifth chest, but he carried hoarder-esque tendencies anyways. He had to prioritize what to keep after the sudden move to the new base after essential exile from L’manberg, but now that he was free to do whatever he wanted here, he fell back into old habits.

He had gold, iron, diamonds a-plenty, even emeralds and potions, too. Blaze rods were an easy feat to obtain, as were enderpearls. The tall creatures who held the jaded spheres and the hissing orange beings with their whirring bars were not all that scary when he was wielding a netherite sword that gleamed with recent enchantments.

Technoblade had casual items too. A stack of white wool, some cobblestone, a burnt-out torch; most were from Phil dropping by and leaving an object or two. He didn’t mind. There were never enough materials. He always seemed to need any random thing at any random time. 

So the holes in his chests should’ve been a cause for concern.

Most of the things that went missing were mildly important, at least to some degree. Some emeralds, a sword or two, a shield, maybe, a stack of golden apples, some food. No armor, though, not that he was aware of. His iron and diamond stores had taken a gentle hit, and he was missing quite a few enderpearls. _Pearls. Pearls,_ the voices informed him, even though he knew already.

What he didn’t know was who had taken them, or where they had gone, and yet, the items were not just randomly selected. It wasn’t like someone had come into his house looking for any old thing to steal - the missing objects were scattered all across different chests, he realized, as he pried through his belongings. The emeralds were upstairs, the food and the shield downstairs. The golden apples were upstairs, the sword downstairs. 

Phil hadn’t been around in a few days. Maybe that was why. His father did have a pretty bad habit of starting new adventures without telling anyone; it was likely he’d just taken some things for a new quest and left.

_No, no._ They responded. They always did. They had been getting louder lately, fiercer in their statements. More complex ones formed, and he could never catch them in time to truly understand what was being said. _No quest._ So Phil hadn’t left for a quest? It left more questions unanswered in his mind than before. Who was stealing his things, where was Phil, why was his stuff going missing? _Tommy. Tommy._

Technoblade was getting awfully tired of his brother’s name. Was he supposed to go and look for him? Tubbo and Dream had jointly exiled him, and technically, he was half-allied with the latter. He couldn’t exactly go against the second-most powerful member of the most powerful nation on the server without major consequence. And considering he was supposed to be in retirement, that was something he wanted to avoid. 

He rose to his feet and placed locks across his chest’s fronts. Nobody would be able to get in without a key, and whoever was stealing his things would stop.

_Stop! Stop!_ They grew loud within an instant and he pressed a hand to his skull, trying to get them to shut up. _Don’t do that! Remove! Stop!_ His lip curled. If he wanted his belongings to stay where they were, then he had to keep the chests fastened shut.

The voices didn’t stop until he removed the locks.


	2. What He Did Notice

He should’ve known something was wrong when there was nothing.

No footprints. The original ones had faded after a while, but every now and again he’d see a splatter of dark color on the living room floor.

No creaking. The noises had gone away after, maybe, a week, disappeared into thin air. The house was deathly still, cold, and silent, awaiting his arrival whenever he left. 

No missing items. The gaps in his chests disappeared one day - nothing had been replaced, but things had stopped being taken.

And no voices. They were still there, but they were quiet. Mournful, almost. It was as though they were all in on a great big secret that he had not been privy to, and he was just the one who had to listen in on the reactions of the tale.

He was awaiting Phil’s arrival. Techno had made his father aware of the disappearance of the voices through the communicators they carried, and the man had insisted on meeting up immediately. He offered to visit his son’s house, and there was nothing that he could do to fight against it. 

Not that he didn’t want to see him. He did. Phil hadn’t been around in a few days, and for that reason, he was cleaning up to make sure that he didn’t look like a fool when his father arrived. He had never been one to keep his surroundings in pristine condition, mainly because he was too busy working. Yet he had decided to take the evening and spend it ensuring that things were orderly, especially considering how quickly all the happenings had ended. 

The kitchen and living room were easy to tidy. Place a few books back into the shelves, re-situate the rugs on the floor and the paintings on the walls, and just like that, he was practically done. He made his way to the basement shortly after, glancing briefly at the cow who let out a cheerful moo in response to his arrival.

He gave the creature an acknowledging nod, snagged the nearby broom, and began to sweep it mindlessly across the floor. Cleaning was boring, but it was something to do, at least, while he waited for Phil to get here.

His communicator pinged. Quickly, he pulled it from his pocket and looked at the message that popped up on the screen, shimmering in the half-lit room.

_I’m not sure I’ll make it in time for nightfall, Techno._ It was from Phil. _Maybe tomorrow works better._

He frowned. _I wanted to see you today,_ he typed back.

_I know,_ came the response, almost immediately. _It’s snowy, and Quackity, Tubbo, and Fundy were all trying to mess with me earlier._

The frown deepened. _They what?_

_It’s no biggie. I’ll let you know tomorrow, alright mate? Get some sleep. I know you need it._ He could see Phil’s gentle smile and could feel the light clap of a hand on his shoulder, encouraging. _If the voices are gone, maybe you’ll get better sleep without them._

He waited a little until he responded. _Right._

And that was it. There was no more pinging.

Unhappily, he put the device back into his pocket. He couldn’t fault the man, could he? If it was snowing a lot, then he couldn’t exactly force Phil to come out into the wintry landscape and forge it just to say hello. Phil was still in L’manberg, technically. He had a place to uphold there. 

And whatever had happened with Fundy, Quackity, and Tubbo seemed to be keeping him back, too, like the trio’s actions were invisible chains around his father’s ankles.

He absently kicked at the stony flooring as though to try to cleanse it of invisible dirt, and a slight squeak came from where he’d moved.

His heart dropped and the voices mumbled into his ears.

_Yes. Yes._

The slate had shifted beneath his foot and his red eyes settled on the ground. 

_There. Right there._

There was a stone slab.

He was quiet and careful as he kneeled down, pulling upward on the edge of the rock and yanking hard. It came free with ease, and beneath, he could see there was something down there. Something had made something down there.

The smell that crawled up was terrible. It was like something had died down there - oh, God, it really did smell awful. He leaned back, coughing into his sleeve, swatting at the air with his hand. It would be easier to just nudge the slab back over the hole and ignore it, but he had to investigate. 

There wasn’t a ladder that he could see, so Technoblade eased into a pair of nearby boots and hopped down. _Careful, careful,_ the voices called. _Uh oh._

The first thing he noticed was how cold it was. It was an encroaching type of freeze, not a quick and biting chill; it slowly seeped into one’s skin, slowly sunk claws into one’s skull, slowly and painfully drained one of warmth. It was unpleasant, unsettling. He didn’t like it.

He had already noticed the smell, but there was something different about it down here; it smelled like something had burnt and frozen at the same time. The faint metallic twang of blood was present in the air, and it sent the voices into a frenzy instantly. _Blood! Blood! Blood for the Blood God!_

The third was the darkness. It was swathing, complete, and suffocating. He couldn’t see a single thing, no matter how hard he tried to see the stony walls he knew rose around him. Matches, matches, the voices reminded him, holding back their incessant want of crimson for just a moment. Techno shook himself briefly, as though to try to dislodge the icy fear that was slowly climbing into his bones, and struck one from his pocket.

Matches weren’t known to provide mass amounts of light, but he didn’t need mass amounts of light to see the cramped cave.

A yellowy-orange sheen bathed the hollow, and he could only find himself more surprised and, deep down, concerned for whatever had been here.

The walls were raggedy and so was the floor - it was littered with cracked pebbles, bits of paper, and various nondescript objects, and he could see four chests on the far right. He was positive they contained his missing items, and when the light glinted off an emerald, his suspicions were confirmed. To the left was a bed, pressed against the wall. It wasn’t really even a bed, he didn’t think. He couldn’t have been sure; his eyes glazed past it.

And… that was it, he realized, as he turned to let the match illuminate the right side. There was no furnishing. It was just a trifling cavern with a bed, some chests, and the simple ability to overwhelm anyone who wasn’t ready for its assault on their senses.

“Hello?” His query sounded far away. Like it did not belong. Like it wasn’t really his.

He took a step forward and his boot landed on a faded splotch of blood. He did not cringe nor shy away, instead leaned down and inspected it. _Four days. Three days. A week._ The voices provided him with times, with reason, with a backbone that was slipping from his spine. They sometimes helped, he supposed. Sometimes they quelled their desire for cerise and instead supported him. They knew when he needed it.

Techno glanced back toward the left. On the bed, on the left side, pressed against the wall, half-huddled in the blanket, was a figure. Cold shock flitted through him. He blinked, as though he expected it to disappear, but it stayed. Someone was living down here? For how long had they been here?

_Oh, God._ That was his voice, clear and loud in his head against the cacophony rising in his skull. Someone was _living_ here. 

“Hello?” His tone was steeled as he approached. “Why are you in my house?”

There wasn’t a response nor any indication that he had been heard. The person didn’t even move a little bit. There was a response in his head, loud, clear, panicked, frightened, mourning. He ignored them. He didn’t want to hear it. He knew that they were there, and he knew what they were saying, and he didn’t want to hear it. Ever. Not now. Not ever.

When the warrior got close enough, he laid a hand on their back. They were like a block of ice, unmoving and stuck where they were. They were like a stone, welded into the floor, just waiting for time to weather them until they were nothing more than a worn memory and a pile of dust. They didn’t move when he’d gotten into the cave, they didn’t move when he had spoken to them, and they didn’t move as he nudged them.

He placed a hand on their shoulder and rolled them over. 

His brother’s pair of empty gray eyes stared up at him.

Technoblade stumbled back as he let the boy’s body fall limply to the floor, knuckles instantly whitening as he clenched his fists at his sides. His breath billowed immediately in a terrified exhale, unable to grasp onto anything except the racing of his heart, the blood in his ears, the shivering that quickly overtook his frame. And the voices. 

_Tommy. Tommy. Tommy. Tommy. Tommy._

The voices would not stop.

_Dead. He’s dead. Tommy’s dead._

Tommy was dead. Tommy was dead. Tommy was dead?

He turned back to the wall and pressed his face to its freezing surface as if its bitter claws would wake him up from this terrible dream. He didn’t wake up, and neither did Tommy.

_Phil. Tell Phil,_ the voices demanded, loud and clear in his suddenly scatterbrained mind.

How was he supposed to tell Phil? Or Wilbur? Oh, God. Wilbur wouldn’t even know the extent of what had happened, would he? Would Phil? Did _he_ know the full extent of what had happened? His vision blurred and the warrior sunk his teeth into his lip, squeezing his eyes shut. 

_Do something. Do something. Tommy. Tommy. Tell Phil. He’s dead._

A shaking hand reached into his pocket and pulled out the communicator. A message was drafted in seconds and he sent it immediately: _help_ followed by _please come to my house tonight_. He needed someone else here, someone else to help him with… with Tommy. No. It felt so wrong. Tommy was just a boy, just a kid, just his little brother. He didn’t deserve this. How had this happened to him? How long had he been here? Who did this to him?

An unwelcome ball of dread settled into his stomach.

_Could I have prevented this?_

The ping of his communicator reminded him that he was still in the waking world. 

Phil’s reply gleamed. _I’ll be right over._

He leaned back against the wall, exhaling heavily to try to dispel himself of the panic that raced through his body. He couldn’t stop his shivers, and they weren’t from the cold this time. Heavy guilt settled on his shoulders; he could’ve stopped this, couldn’t he? And the answer was right there, hovering right above his head. He could’ve. Tommy had been here. Tommy had been the squeaking floorboards, the missing items, the footprints in the snow, the blood on the floor. He had been nothing more than clues and Techno had ignored them.

And he’d ignored the voices, too. That was getting harder to do.

_Upstairs,_ they said, firm but far softer than they had been before. _Bring Tommy up. Bring Tommy. Tommy. Tommy. Sorry, Techno._ They seemed to have known what they had done in escalating his intense alarm. _We’re sorry. Sorry. Sorry._

He had to bring Tommy upstairs. He had to do what he should’ve done far earlier.

Techno steeled himself, his jaw tightening as he exhaled again, harder than before. Uprighting himself and carefully approaching Tommy’s frame, he did his best to ignore his cold gray eyes. They usually were so bright, so shiny, so _blue_ , and now they were just two twin rocks, glazed over, staring at nothing. He wanted to hurt something, he wanted to scream until his throat was raw so that the world knew what it had done to his brother. His brother, who was annoying but meant the best and put his trust in the wrong places; his brother, who was boisterous but always did what was right and still got the worst card in the deck. 

He couldn’t do it. He turned back around and flushed himself back against the wall, pressing his cheek against the cold, stony surface, hoping it’d swallow him up if his eyes squeezed hard enough. It didn’t. It was just him.

No, not anymore. Not just him. The voices clattered up in his skull again. They never left for very long, and they were not often kind or considerate. Their brief spell of comfort didn’t last long. He should’ve known they’d go back to their old ways soon enough. 

_Blood, blood, blood._ They wanted someone to suffer for what had happened to Tommy, and their demands grew sharper, fiercer, rising into a shout. _Blood for the Blood God. Blood. Make them pay. Make him pay._ Him? _Dream. Dream. He did this. Make him pay. Blood. Blood._ Dream did this? _Yes. Yes. Dream. Blood._

They were so loud that he did not hear the knocking, he did not hear the gentle calls of his father upstairs, he did not hear the creaking of a door opening. He didn’t hear the shuffle of a pair of boots across the floorboards, moving into the basement, and the light gasp at the unpleasant odor that enveloped the room. 

_Blood. Blood. Get him. Dream. Blood._ He couldn’t even hear himself over their screaming. It was like little kids were slamming their fists over and over again on the insides of his head, wailing and crying over something he couldn’t fix now. The warrior crumbled against the floor, against the wall, burying his head into knees that pulled themselves up to his chest. _Blood. Blood. Get him! Get him! Blood for the Blood God!_

“Techno? Are you down here-? Oh my God-”

There was a freezing silence for only a second. The voices stopped. The shuffling of footsteps stopped. And then Techno was pushing himself to his shaking feet and into his father’s arms, eyes squeezing shut and face burying into his shoulder. The man, still speckled by snow, stood, shell-shocked, before pulling his son close, albeit slowly.

“Techno-? What-” Phil sounded so confused, so worried, and he shook his head uselessly. His throat was tight and his eyes burned with tears. He didn’t want to explain, even though he knew his father deserved a scrap of reason from this terrible scene he’d wandered into. 

Phil threaded a hand to pull Techno’s chin up and away so that his eyes were forced open to view him. He didn’t want to. The voices would come back and they’d be stronger than before, because he could almost sense that there were more of them. He was certain that they’d control him, and his eyes would turn a sharper reddened hue, and his hands would grasp at weapons to slice through skin and he didn’t want to hurt his father, he never wanted to and never would.

“Techno.” Phil’s voice was quiet. “I need- need you to explain what happened. It’s alright, Techno. I’m not unhappy with you - I just…” An exhale. “...need you to tell me what happened.”

_Blood._ A single tone called into the empty landscape of his skull and he clamped his jaws shut, not wanting to cry again, not wanting to do anything except just stand there and wait until the cold swallowed him up. But he couldn’t, and he had to take advantage of the time that he had without the voices’ constant input.

“Dad-” he whispered hoarsely, “he- he’s dead. Tommy’s dead.”

Techno could almost see the exact same realization pale in his father’s face; Tommy, the youngest of their family, was dead. How was he dead? He had always been rambunctious and overbearing sometimes, but he was still a kid, he was just a kid. They’d both seen the emaciated figure huddled near the blankets on the far right side. In his final days, his final weeks, someone had reduced the usually bright-eyed boy to a dull, skeletal frame. He didn’t deserve that. 

Phil pulled Techno close again, and this time, he could feel his father’s tears prick into his pink hair, disheveled and messy. He took a staggering breath like it was the hardest thing he’d ever done, and Techno found it was impossible to keep from weeping.

“My boy,” murmured Phil faintly. 

_My brother._

Silence. No voices. Nothing. Nothing more than a father and son mourning.

And then, a single tone:

_Get Dream._

_I will._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> soo? how was it? did you like it?? i had fun with techno's reaction to what would've happened if tommy was dead and wasn't just a little raccoon vibing in his basement  
> i hope it turned out ok!! i spent a few days editing and cleaning it up after its original 3am state LOL  
> also yes i know techno said no canon SBI family dynamic but i say no thank you good sir and continue to write my fd au anyway
> 
> thank you for reading :]


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